Monkey Shines

Houston has two seasons. Winter, which starts around mid-December, is when the entire city bundles up in coats and gloves and scarves and complains that the 40 degree temperature is bone-numbing. Summer, which starts about Valentine’s Day, is when we rev up the AC and life is back to normal. Some days, the humidity is so bad that it’s like breathing through a wet dog, but those of us who are over thirty appreciate that it keeps us from getting all wrinkly.

When I lived up north, winter was something you had to deal with.

The first day of school guaranteed that you needed a sweater. By February, that beautiful snow which had first coated the landscape in lovely, white layers was now gritty, grey and disgusting.

Between the start of school and the day the first new buds appeared on the trees, you had to decide how you would endure the winter. Some people while away the hours participating in winter sports like skiing, ice skating or ice fishing. Others hunker down inside the house, drinking hot chocolate and perusing the Sunday travel section’s descriptions of South Seas islands cruises and wait for spring.

I tried my hand at skiing and ice skating, but I never understood ice fishing.

Last Saturday, 134 fishermen were rescued from a massive chunk of ice floating in Lake Erie. One man died from a heart attack after falling into the water.

Ice fishing is just plain nuts.

To effectively ice fish, it must be cold enough outside to freeze water. Humans are up to 60 percent water. The brain is 70 percent water and the lungs are nearly 90 percent water. Your lungs freeze first, then your brain, then other parts of your body start falling off in frozen lumps.

It is impossible to ice fish unless you are on a span of ice suspended over an open body of deep water because that is where the fish hang out. Some ice fishermen head out onto the ice with just a thermos, a chair and their fishing equipment. Others haul everything but the kitchen sink out with them.

I am suspicious of any piece of ice that is supposed to be strong enough to hold pickup trucks, ATVs, burly men, ice shanties, card tables, coolers of beer, enough food to last the weekend, cigars, a TV to watch the football game and … what did we forget…. oh yeah! the fishing equipment.

The fish do not burrow their way up through the ice to be caught. The fishermen must use ice augers to cut holes in the ice. I picture ice that looks like Swiss cheese over deep water – deep cold water. Swiss cheese ice holding burly men, trucks, shanties and coolers.

According to one report: “The day began with fishermen setting down wooden pallets to create a bridge over a crack in the ice so they could roam farther out on the lake. But the planks fell into the water when the ice shifted, stranding the fishermen about 1,000 yards off shore.

“We get people out here who don’t know how to read the ice,” Ottawa County Sheriff Bob Bratton said. “What happened here today was just idiotic. I don’t know how else to put it.”

I believe Sheriff Branton spends his winters just as I used to, perusing the Sunday travel section’s descriptions of South Seas islands cruises and waiting for spring.